
When I look back at this time in history, I don’t think I’ll view it much differently than I do now. I think I’ll still be completely baffled by it. Either that or I’ll know this was the era within my lifetime that the world really did change for the worse.
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest culprit in our thus far “perceived” downfall as a society has not been our leaders, it hasn’t been a pandemic, and it hasn’t been any single political, social, or cultural issue. The biggest culprit in how we view our world – to me, anyway – has been the proliferation of social media.
Think about it. Where do we see most of the political propaganda?
Social media.
Where do we see people going out of their way to tear others down?
Social media.
Where do we get almost ALL of our news?
Social media.
Where do we create and cultivate most of our friendships?
Social media.
Where do we get to display ourselves with no warts, no fat, no smells, and no flaws, and where can we do this by reinventing who WE want to be, to hell with the truth of it all? We can live about eighty percent of our lives never having to embrace and accept who we really are. We can go on social media and be somebody completely different, and we can use that ability to manipulate the tiny world that follows us, leaving no real sense of integral faith in anybody, even ourselves.
In other words, social media has made us all into little make-believe characters. I’m speaking, of course, in unfairly broad terms, but I have grown to view social media as the antithesis of real life. Just look at what that’s doing to us.
It has made us nothing but vessels of mostly useless information, never really stopping to process or reflect on the parts that matter. It has made us all fear manufactured ideas, not the people behind the ideas, many of which are really dangerous. It has made us hate a world of fiction, not the tangible world that lives beyond our phone or computer screen. That world is real. The world you see on social media is completely made up. Some of the parts are real, but the collection of real and fake leans heavily towards a fantasy in which I seldom want to reside. It’s the real highlights and the real lowlights, and all the stuff in the middle that makes us human and makes life real has been deemed unnecessary to social media.
We now live in a world of extremes, never really seeing the real stuff in the middle, and that’s not the cause of any one person or political party or social movement or conspiracy theory or cultural phenomenon. It’s the result of far too many years of fiction being served as real life.
One of the worst results of this has been in the world of politics, and for years now I’ve been trying my damnedest to understand it. And after all these years, I was driving the other day and it occurred to me that the stuff I don’t understand can all be traced back to a completely acceptable form of social fiction. And in making it completely acceptable, the very basics of what I think we stand for as a nation have taken a huge hit.
I thought of it like a political platform, but one that all ideologies – and all political parties – should wholeheartedly embrace. We’re going to have differences – it’s precisely what God or whoever made us intended – but because of social media, we no longer have to accept those differences as inevitable. We have come to view them as merely obstacles to truth.
But therein lies one of the major problems. Our differences have become obstacles to a truth derived almost exclusively from social media, and that, if you really pay attention, is fiction. Truth has become fiction, mostly because of social media.
That feels really deep, even for my sometimes twisted noggin, but it doesn’t feel wrong. Somebody will have to tell me if that makes any sense or not. This is one of those blog posts where I’m writing ALL my thoughts, even if they are somewhat convoluted and far too conceptual, but I’ve never minded sounding weird simply because it might not make sense to somebody else.
At the end of this thought, all I wanted to do was sit down and come up with a few platform ideas we need as a nation to get back to what I remember to be a much more civil, far more decent, and abundantly more respectful country. I wanted to come up with what our forefathers no doubt dreamed of when they allowed themselves to see the future of the United States. I came up with four things that are destroying politics, and thereby destroying social media, and thereby destroying any chance we have at eventually being able to tell fact from fiction. And the end result of that would be devastating for this country.
I called it “America’s Political Platform.” Fancy, huh?
The Demand for Truth
From day one, my biggest issue with our president has been the simple fact that our country was not created to put this much importance on one man – whether good importance or bad importance – and yet one man has taken on a transcendent, godlike importance I hope I never again see in my lifetime, no matter the party. We’re a democratic republic represented by a citizen government with a well-tuned system of checks and balances and a Constitution that together ensures that one man never gets this much power. We have failed our forefathers – and each other – in that regard.
The other major problem I have always had with him is his inability to tell the truth. I know full well that in the political arena he doesn’t share that mantle alone, and I’d be a fool to think he did. I also know he’s not the first to tell lies, but he IS the first to tell this many; so many, in fact, that I believe absolutely nothing he says. I still believe in quite a lot of Republican ideals, especially the ones that work so well when melded with Democratic ideals, and I won’t allow one man enough power to make me stop believing in them, but to say I trust anything he says would be a lie.
But we now have an epidemic of little white lies, untruths, bent truths, fabricated fiction, and bald-faced lies erupting in our country, and social media has run rampant with it to the point that no truth is real, no lie is fake, no expert is above question, and the loudest among us get to decide what the nation believes.
I no longer believe ANYTHING I see on social media or from ANY politician, and that is a very dangerous position for this country to be in. The citizens of this country – both parties – have to demand it. This is the biggest “country over party” stance ANY of us can and should take. It’s wholly and abundantly bipartisan.
Please note, however, that truth and belief are different. I can’t and won’t question anyone’s beliefs. It is our duty as citizens, however, to question “truths” that are so easily proven to be lies. Politicians should not lie to us about anything other than what is unnecessary for us to know because of national security. Otherwise, I expect the truth. I demand it. We all should.
The Reduction of Generalizations
Every Republican isn’t a gun-toting, Bible-thumping hypocrite. Every Democrat isn’t a devil-worshiping, anti-police communist. Everybody who can’t see their “privilege” isn’t racist. Everybody who wants good schools isn’t a socialist. Everybody who supports a capitalist economy isn’t against taking care of the environment. Everybody who wants legal abortions isn’t pro-choice. Everybody who goes to church isn’t a Republican. Every gay person isn’t a Democrat.
Because of social media, we now see adjectives, not people, and we’re less human because of it.
The Removal of Propaganda
In its purest form, propaganda is nothing but our government trying to trick us. In no way is that right. No way.
Just imagine for a second if every speech, every political ad, and every topic debated on every platform required its presenter to cover both sides of every issue (along with the bipartisan history of the issue,) and if they couldn’t do it, they were immediately discredited as a viable opinion. Or if every claim made by a politician had to be backed up with data and evidence.
Or if on both the state AND national level, politicians were not allowed to take all the credit for huge increases in blahblah when it was those same politicians that first took away the blahblah, but now since it makes them look good, they will take ALL the credit for the blahblah. Or if politicians no longer in office were immune to blame, simply because it accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Why do we allow our politicians to do all of that? These are people who took a vow to represent ALL of us, and if we can look at something and say, “You literally only gave us your side of the story and even your side was barely true,” there’s a problem with that. It’s OUR votes, OUR representatives, and OUR tax dollars. We don’t ask for or want propaganda. We ask for fair representation and integrity. Trying to trick those you represent is shitty and should not be acceptable by ANY of us.
The Freedom of “You be You”
How many things could this simple mantra fix in this country? We don’t accept people who practice other religions, we don’t accept people who choose not to believe in ANY religion, we don’t accept people for who they love, we don’t accept people who made mistakes but are showing evidence of real change, we don’t accept people who feel differently about a virus, we don’t accept people who work or parent differently than us.
There’s another side to it, as well. In many ways, we have to learn to accept that some people just aren’t changing. When that happens, it can’t be met with anger and violence. Some people might choose to be racist and you aren’t changing them, and if you encounter these people, what exactly can you do about it? If they choose to be racist but they aren’t breaking any laws or inhibiting others’ freedom, it would be VERY dangerous to all of us to give the government the power to control their beliefs, no matter how morally wrong we deem them to be.
In many ways, when people believe things that we think are morally wrong, we have to simply look the other way and realize that sometimes we can’t change people. And maybe we shouldn’t. It’s the other side of “you be you,” and it’s just as important.
Conclusion
Think about the last five political posts or memes you saw on Facebook or Twitter that angered you? Now go pull one of them up and study it. Then look back at the four things I just wrote about and see if it is guilty of at least one of them. I almost guarantee you that it contains lies, generalizations, propaganda, or an unwillingness to accept people who differ from a perceived “norm.” I could have included fear-mongering in that list, too, but if you’re resorting to those four, fear-mongering is already a characteristic.
This political environment has broken me in some ways. I don’t want to believe this is our new normal and that I have to accept my politics with lies, generalizations, propaganda, fear, and hate for the rest of my life. The disdain of those should be bipartisan.
Think about it this way. As long as it’s accepted practice, we can’t actually trust anything our government does or says. We can’t trust political parties.
Or think about it in a much more personal way. When we are being governed with lies, generalizations, propaganda, and hate, we can’t trust that sending our sons or daughters to war is in the best interest of our country. It may simply be in the best interest of one person. Or one party. Or one corporation. And that is most certainly NOT what our forefathers wanted. I love my country, but I sure as hell don’t trust it.
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